Oakland Tribune In A Fight To Stay Alive

July 23, 1990|By Lee Gomes, Knight-Ridder Newspapers.

OAKLAND — The operation was called ``Brainstorm,`` and its objective was to help turn the ailing Tribune in Oakland around.

Everyone at the newspaper, from reporters to press operators, would form teams to think up ideas to cut costs and boost efficiency. The staff spent weeks revving up for the effort. Consultants were brought in; newsletters with Brainstorm logos were printed; and department heads spent a day in training.

But in May, just days before the operation was to start, Brainstorm was canceled-in large part because the Tribune didn`t have the money to pay for it.

Painful ironies and dashed hopes-that`s what life is like these days at Oakland`s daily newspaper.

A generation ago, the Tribune was a San Francisco Bay Area powerhouse that outsold the San Francisco Chronicle. No longer. After years of chronic financial difficulties, the Trib is in a fight to stay alive.

Circulation and revenues are down, but costs stay high. Equipment is aging, but there`s no money to replace anything. The paper is wooing new readers but is also making staff cuts that are sure to hurt the quality of its product.

Some wonder whether Oakland has the economic base, or whether the Tribune has the leadership, to keep the presses rolling. Were the paper to fold-something that is now openly discussed-Oakland would become the nation`s largest city without its own daily record of community life.

The man trying to prevent that from happening is the Tribune`s charismatic owner and publisher, Robert C. Maynard, the Brooklyn-born son of Barbados immigrants and one of the highest-ranking blacks in U.S. publishing-a fact that explains much of the national attention now being paid to his newspaper.

Maynard, a high school dropout who became the White House correspondent for the Washington Post, bought the Tribune for $22 million from Gannett Corp. in 1983, using borrowed money.

Though his involvement at the paper has waxed and waned since then-especially during a bout with prostate cancer-friends and associates say being publisher is central to Maynard`s identity and he`s determined to make a go of it.

Today, Maynard, 53, and his wife are holding tightly onto the reins of power despite complaints from several former executives that his business acumen doesn`t match his considerable journalistic skill.

Many U.S. newspapers are in a mild recession these days, the victims of reductions in retail advertising budgets. The situation at the Tribune is far worse. The paper claims a slight profit for 1989. But from January to May of this year, it lost $2.5 million on revenue of about $20 million, according to one person who has seen the books of the private company.

In the last few months, the Tribune`s woes have put the newspaper in the uncomfortable position of repeatedly being in the news.

- During May, rumors were rampant throughout Bay Area newsrooms that the Tribune`s cash drain had become so acute that it would be seeking bankruptcy court protection. Maynard is even said to have told top staff members that a filing was imminent.

But on May 10, the paper hired the Southern California turnaround specialist firm of Durkee-Sharlitt Associates, which has since had a team of high-priced consultants encamped at the paper, poring over operations. Stiff- and dispiriting-budget cuts were also announced. For example, the sportswriter covering the San Francisco Giants was told he could no longer go on the road with the team.

- Two-and-a-half weeks ago, the Trib announced the paper`s staff of 725 people, already pared by 10 percent two years ago, would be slashed 25 percent. While much of that reduction will be achieved through voluntary buyouts, layoffs are expected to hit some of the newer minority employees because of union seniority rules. Their absence will leave the Tribune with the whitish cast among reporters and editors that Maynard was determined to change.

There was also a corporate restructuring that resulted in the discharge of nearly half the top managers from the paper`s business side. Many had only recently been hired from top jobs elsewhere for steep executive recruitment fees.

- Maynard then made an impassioned public appeal to business and civic leaders in a community meeting, asking Oakland residents to subscribe and to patronize advertisers. ``A community without a newspaper is like a ship without a compass,`` he said in a speech that the Tribune reprinted June 21.

Another of the painful ironies at the Tribune is that these worst of times are happening concurrently with some of the paper`s best. In April, it won a Pulitzer Prize, its second, for photographs of the October 1989 Northern California earthquake. The staff has also won scores of other journalistic awards this year.

What`s causing the Tribune`s problems? Suspects aren`t hard to find.

Maynard cites high labor costs, the October earthquake that hurt Oakland retailing and the current newspaper recession.

Many of the Tribune`s staffing levels and union contracts were established during fatter, happier days-the payroll was near 1,000 when he became publisher. As a result, Maynard said, personnel expenses make up 60 percent of the budget, which he called double the average for papers its size. Maynard said the $8 million being saved from the cuts and rearrangements will eliminate the high cost structure that has plagued the paper during his tenure. That will allow profits, he said, which can be plowed back into operations.